Literature / How To

This is a book of bad ideas. At least, most of them are bad ideas. It's possible some good ones slipped through the cracks. If so, I apologize.

"If you want to beat a high jumper, you have two options:
1. Dedicate your life to athletic training, from an early age, until you become the world's best high jumper.
2. Cheat.
The first option is no doubt an admirable one, but if that's your choice, then you're reading the wrong book. Let's talk about option two."

Randall Munroe, Chapter 1: How to Jump Really High

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems is the third book by Randall Munroe, the author of What If? and the creator of xkcd. Released in September 2019, the book features 28 chapters that go in-depth on extremely bad solutions to common, everyday problems, such as how to power your house, cross a river, or dispose of the very book you're reading. How bad, you ask? Think making a hydroelectric dam with an airport water fountain to charge your phone, sending files with butterflies, and measuring teeth radioactivity to find your age; things all gone into extreme detail and explained as simply as possible, and all with Randall's special sense of humor.

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How to List Tropes (on TV Tropes)

• Apocalypse How: Not as common as the usual What If? article, but still occurs.
  • In the epilogue of Chapter 16: How to Power Your House (on Earth), Randall mentions the "false vacuum" models, where space-time itself has a certain amount of tension that, if nudged in just the right way, could be released. Space is extremely big, so naturally the thought of harvesting that energy is going to be brought up. In short: triggering vacuum decay will create a bubble of true vacuum expanding at the speed of light until it engulfs the entire universe, and then proceeds to collapse it.
    I asked Dr. Mack how much power would be released if someone triggered vacuum decay in their yard, and whether it could be harnessed to power their home. Her response: "Please do not do that."

• Artistic License – Physics: Averted, to a point where even the difference in gravity between Earth's equator and poles are accounted for.

• As the Good Book Says...: The saying "Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning." is mentioned in a footnote in Chapter 12: How to Predict the Weather as even being mentioned in the Bible. More specifically:
  "When it is evening, ye say, 'It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.' And in the morning, 'It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and lowering.'" - Matthew 16:2-3

• Awesome, but Impractical: The introduction to the book immediately clarifies that "this is a book of bad ideas."

• Bombproof Appliance: Proven as partially Truth in Television in Chapter 2: How to Throw a Pool Party. At one point, Randall considers the use of nuclear weapons to open a large amount of water bottles as quickly as possible in order to fill a pool, noting that "this is a completely ridiculous suggestion, so it should come as no surprise that it was studied by the US government during the Cold War." The tests proved that, if properly sealed, drinks and beverages inside of fridges can still be perfectly safe to consume in the event of nuclear fallout.

• Call-Back:
  • Most chapters make direct references to other chapters, primarily when the chapter referencing it covers a topic covered in a different chapter.
  • The ^{[citation needed]} Running Gag from What If? appears in Chapter 2: How to Throw a Pool Party.
  • Chapter 6: How to Cross a River has a car flying over a river, with Colonel Chris Hadfield in the back seat, from Chapter 5: How to Make an Emergency Landing.
    Cueball: Hello, folks, this is your driver speaking. Is there anyone on board who knows how to land a car?
  • Near the end of Chapter 27: How to Be on Time, Randall explores altering the flow of UTC time by using a 200-meter ball of lead to alter the Atomic Clock. Chapter 15: How to Mail a Package (from space) mentions that a 200-foot ball of lead could survive uncontrolled reentry into Earth's atmosphere.

• Call-Forward: Parodied in a footnote in Chapter 4: How to Play the Piano (the whole piano).
  For instructions on how to play the piano underwater, see How To 2: How to Do a Bunch More Stuff, If You're Still Alive After Following the Instructions in the First Book.

• Comically Missing the Point:
  • In Chapter 6: How to Cross a River:
    Cueball: You know, it's possible to drown in just six inches of water.
    Megan: Then we should be ok soon - it gets way deeper than that up ahead.

• Deadpan Snarker: Randall's personality in general, so this tends to pop up very often.

• Detonation Moon: Chapter 17: How to Power Your House (on Mars) explores the concept of using the orbit of Phobos, one of Mars' moons, to generate energy. Doing so will accelerate the already-prevalent orbital decay of Phobos, ultimately leading to its destruction once it crosses the Roche Limit.

• Don't Try This at Home: Right before the book's introduction, and a good word of caution for the entire book:
  Disclaimer: Do not try any of this at home. The author of this book is an internet cartoonist, not a health or safety expert. He likes it when things catch fire or explode, which means he does not have your best interests in mind.

• Footnote Fever: As is characteristic for Randall, the book contains many, many examples of jokes and random nonsense stuffed into footnotes.
  We're cheating, but we're not cheating.

• Frictionless Reentry: Completely averted in Chapter 15: How to Mail a Package (from space).

• It's Been Done: Occurs a few times:
  • Chapter 2: How to Throw a Pool Party:
    Cueball: I've figured out a way to produce the oxidation reaction we need, and it looks like it's actually self-sustaining!
    Megan: Fire. You're describing fire.
  • Chapter 7: How to Move reinvents the moving truck and the wheel.
  • Chapter 14: How to Ski:
    You could make the loops even smaller than your body if you pass the stream of snow around your legs, rather than over your head... at which point you'll realize you've effectively reinvented roller skates.
  • Chapter 20: How to Charge Your Phone (when you can't find an outlet):
    Ponytail: I thought of a cool lifehack: burning stuff to generate power. Lots of things here are flammable.
    Megan: You mean... arson.
    Ponytail: No, it's a LIFEHACK!
    Megan: You can't just set random stuff on fire and call it a "lifehack."

• Lava Pit: Deconstructed as the premise of Chapter 10: How to Build a Lava Moat.
  • Lava moats, in theory, are a very effective way to keep undesirable things away from your property (as long as you don't count lava crickets as "undesirable"), but poses as much of a risk itself as the things you're trying to keep out. For one, lava radiates an immense amount of heat, meaning that you have to use some sort of heat source to actually keep it molten. You could do this just by using a crucible, but this generates more problems — for one, it'll cost around $10 per hour for each square meter of moat, which quickly adds up when you're trying to cover an actually decent amount of land. Additionally, the immense heat that lava radiates is enough to cause skin pain within 10 seconds just from standing a few meters away from it... and standing very close to it can lead to second-degree burns in less than a second. In fact, standing in front of a window 10 meters from the moat will still be hot enough to cause pain. You can mitigate this by making the moat deeper in the ground, so more heat goes up rather than out, but then a new issue arises - no matter what way the wind blows, it'll always be blowing the heat from the lava towards your house, meaning you'll have to install some sort of water cooling system inside your walls. You'd also want to consider ventilation, especially if the lava gives off toxic fumes, but now you have to worry about jellyfish blocking the drain and people crawling through your air ducts. Overall, the concept of a lava moat is Awesome, but Impractical.

• Made of Explodium: As Chapter 14: How to Ski shows, liquid oxygen is this.
  Liquid nitrogen is a popular cryogenic fluid in part because it's so inert and nonreactive. Liquid oxygen is neither of those things.

• Mythology Gag:
  • Chapter 7: How to Move mentions that a frictionless vacuum would make moving much, much easier, but you unfortunately don't live in one. The image to go along with it is Cueball and Megan talking to Ponytail about purchasing an airless, frictionless dome.
  • Chapter 22: How to Catch a Drone makes mention of using a boomerang to take down a drone, referencing a certain comic that's also used as the featured image for Brick Joke.

• Natural Elements: Parodied in Chapter 20: How to Charge Your Phone (when you can't find an outlet):
  Megan: Ah, yes, the four elements: Air, Water, Fire, and Escalators.

• Pirate Booty: Defied in Chapter 3: How to Dig a Hole.
  You also might want to double-check the authenticity of your pirate treasure map, because pirates didn't actually bury treasure.
  That's not quite true. There was one time that a pirate buried treasure somewhere. One time. And the entire idea of buried pirate treasure comes from that one incident.

• Shockingly Expensive Bill: The electricity bill for heating a 1-acre lava moat, as per Chapter 10: How to Build a Lava Moat. A 1-meter, 600°C moat will cost $20,000 per day (at $0.10/kilowatt hour)... but a 10-meter wide moat at 1,200°C will cost $1,500,000 per day.

• Shout-Out:
  • The Q&A with Chris Hadfield in Chapter 5: How to Make an Emergency Landing makes a direct mention of The Core and The Wizard of Oz.
  • Chapter 11: How to Play Football deconstructs a scene from Lord of the Rings, determining whether a horse could really run through a sea of orcs without being slowed down. Simple answer: no, it cannot. The end of the chapter also features a comic involving Cueball taking a football and throwing it in a volcano, destroying it once and for all.
  • Chapter 13: How to Play Tag makes direct mention of the infamous Slow and Steady Wins the Race tale, Aesop's "The Tortoise and the Hare."
  • In a footnote in Chapter 23: How to Tell If You're a Nineties Kid:
    (...) to gain immunity and avoid a risky later-in-life (chickenpox) infection. Then everything changed¹ in 1995, when a chicken pox vaccine became available (...)

    ¹ If you expected the words "...when the Fire Nation attacked!" here, you are of a very specific age.

• Shown Their Work: Randall typically shows all the math and formulas used for the physics behind the methods in the book.

• The Air Not There: Averted, most directly in Chapter 15: How to Mail a Package (from space), and most humorously in Chapter 7: How to Move.
  Megan: This airless dome looks nice. I wonder why it's so cheap.
  Ponytail: You know the three rules of real estate: location location, and an oxygenated atmosphere with surfaces you can move over in a controlled manner.

• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: In Chapter 2: How to Throw a Pool Party:
  Cueball: Let's just dig a little temporary canal. I'm sure no one will mind.
  Hairbun: What could go wrong?

• World Tree: Yggdrasil the World Tree is present in Chapter 2: How to Throw a Pool Party.
  Cueball 1: Ok, does anyone have a hollow wooden cylinder 30 feet in diameter with inch-thick walls?
  Cueball 2: No
  Unnamed character: No
  Hairbun: No
  Beret Guy: I have one, but I'm using it as a pot for my houseplant, Yggdrasil the World Tree.